March 14, 2016 — A change in how farmers are raising seafood is expected to affect human nutrition, a new study found.
According to the research team from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and McGill University, there has been a global shift in the type of feed that is being used in fish farming.
The team explained that prior to this shift, farm-raised seafood ate feed made from fish meal and fish oil, which came from wild fish. However, since catching wild fish to use as feed was no longer sustainable, farmers have been relying on plant-based options, such as soybean meal. The researchers noted in 2008, aquaculture feed contained 50 percent more soybean meal than fish meal. They estimated that from 2008 to 2020, the use of plant-based ingredients can increase by 124 percent.